The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has partnered with Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Inc., to begin addressing the problem with a new platform they call Guided Learning Pathways. The project’s team is currently exploring ways to introduce the platform into the MOOC systems of edX.

Announced June 17 at the Sixth Conference of MIT’s Learning International Networks Consortium but in the works since 2010, the platform allows students to access and organize free, high quality learning materials from all over the internet based on the student’s interest and level of understanding.

As we reported a year ago, the European Union wants to get in to the MOOC game and is doing so now with a dozen partners at colleges throughout Europe in its new OpenUpEd MOOC platform. Partners in 11 different countries (France, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, UK, Russia, Turkey and Israel) joined forces to launch the first pan-European MOOCs initiative with the European Commission backing it. This is a great development for MOOCs globally.

The EU is busy at work, creating transferability and standardization at universities throughout the 27 member countries as part of the Bologna Process. It’s a smart move for the EU to include universities in Turkey and Israel in this consortium as it shows a broader reach to bring European neighbors, friends and NATO members to the table.

Don’t you think it would be great if you could engage with customers, employees, and partners accessing voice, video and data-sharing apps on a Web browser without any plug-ins? Thanks to developments with WebRTC technology, this is becoming a reality. To lend greater insight into this topic, Constellation Research Inc. has come out with a recent report, Ten Things CIOs Should Know about WebRTC. In it, author E. Brent Kelly reveals that WebRTC has the potential to take concepts pioneered by programs such as Skype to the next level. Ordinary Web developers will be able to, for example, use basic JavaScript application programming interfaces (APIs) to craft fully functioning voice, video and data-collaboration apps, or embed these capabilities with other apps with just a few lines of code. As a result, CIOs can lead their organizations to greater levels of employee productivity and customer engagement. “WebRTC may prove to be as disruptive to communications and collaboration as the World Wide Web was for information,” says Kelly, a vice president and principal analyst at Constellation.

Universities from New Mexico to New York will join Coursera in a sprawling expansion of the Silicon Valley startup’s efforts to take online education to the masses.

Together, state systems and flagship universities in nine states will help the company test new business models and teaching methods and potentially put Coursera in competition with some of the ed tech industry’s most established players.

Also see:

A Q&A on the launch of Penn State’s first MOOC— from by psu.edu
Anna Divinsky and Keith Bailey talk about the launch of the first of the University’s five massive open online courses.Excerpt:
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State launched its first massive open online course (MOOC), Introduction to Art: Concepts and Techniques, yesterday — an effort that has been three months in the making. Anna Divinsky, lead faculty member of the Digital Arts Certificate Program at Penn State, has been instrumental in creating the first of the five courses that Penn State is offering this year on the leading MOOC platform, Coursera.

The latest edition of the annual Internet Trends report finds continued robust online growth. There are now 2.4 billion Internet users around the world, and the total continues to grow apace. Mobile usage is expanding rapidly, while the mobile advertising opportunity remains largely untapped. The report reviews the shifting online landscape, which has become more social and content rich, with expanded use of photos, video and audio. Looking ahead, the report finds early signs of growth for wearable computing devices, like glasses, connected wrist bands and watches – and the emergence of connected cars, drones and other new platforms.

I’d like to thank Canada’s George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Alec Couros, and Dave Cormier – as well as David Wiley over at BYU — for being the true pioneers of MOOCs.

I’d like to thank them for their innovative, entrepreneurial spirits and for their hard work in helping others build their own learning ecosystems. It isn’t easy to be change agents within the realm of higher education. They have pressed the envelop many times. Thanks all — and keep up the great work you guys! (Now can you help integrate IBM’s Watson into what MOOCs morph into?! Please…?)

Last year I looked at the impact of Massive Online Open Courses and other forms of online learning were having on learning in the workplace.

So it’s interesting to read that software giant SAP are to launch their own MOOC style platform.

The site, called Open.SAP.com, aims to offer employees and other people interested in the SAP environment, a range of courses on topics that the company believe are key to success in the SAP world.

For instance, the first module available is an introduction to software development on SAP HANA. SAP recommend that people spend around 5 hours per week for six weeks on the course, which has thus far attracted around 20,000 students.

ATLANTA, May 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — The Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing announced today that it will offer the first professional Online Master of Science degree in computer science (OMS CS) that can be earned completely through the “massive online” format. The degree will be provided in collaboration with online education leader Udacity Inc. and AT&T.

All OMS CS course content will be delivered via the massive open online course (MOOC) format, with enhanced support services for students enrolled in the degree program. Those students also will pay a fraction of the cost of traditional on-campus master’s programs; total tuition for the program is initially expected to be below $7,000. A pilot program, partly supported by a generous gift from AT&T, will begin in the next academic year. Initial enrollment will be limited to a few hundred students recruited from AT&T and Georgia Tech corporate affiliates. Enrollment is expected to expand gradually over the next three years.

The Georgia Institute of Technology plans to offer a $7,000 online master’s degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors.

Georgia Tech will work with AT&T and Udacity, the 15-month-old Silicon Valley-based company, to offer a new online master’s degree in computer science to students across the world at a sixth of the price of its current degree. The deal, announced Tuesday, is portrayed as a revolutionary attempt by a respected university, an education technology startup and a major corporate employer to drive down costs and expand higher education capacity.

With these two concepts in mind, I sought to design a MOOC environment that blended the elements of xMOOCs and cMOOCs. The vision was for me to serve as a sort of tour guide, occasionally directing people as needed, establishing suggested “sites” and activities. And yet, I wanted to leave ample room for user-generated, group-constructed knowledge. Here are some of the MOOC features that emerged from this vision.

From DSC: re: Adobe’s Project Context:This is the type of hardware/software combination that I’ve been hoping for and envisioning! Excellent!

It appears to be the type of setup whereby students could quickly and easily collaborate with one another — in a face-to-face setting (and ideally in remote locations as well) — by not just displaying files but also being able to share files with one another. Files can be sent up to the interactive, multi-touch displays as well as to an interactive table. So it’s not just displaying files, but actually sharing files and being able to collaboratively work on a project.

Eventually, I see this being able to be done in your living room. What if MOOCs could integrate this type of web-based collaboration into their projects?

But for now, this is a HUGE step forward in this vision. Great work Adobe! This is innovative! Very helpful!

Example screenshots:

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Also see:

Adobe’s hardware experiments are more than just hobbies: Hands-on with Project Context –– from techcrunch.com by Frederic LardinoisExcerpt (emphasis DSC):
At its MAX conference in Los Angeles [on 5/6/13], Adobe showed quite a few products that will soon be available to its customers, but it also highlighted a number of hardware experiments, including Project Context, a totally re-imagined way for creating magazine layouts, as well as an advanced stylus and a ruler for touchscreens.

1. MOOC’s & Corporate Learning?
There is a great media interest in MOOC’s – the innovations for Massive Open Online Courses – where one instructor runs a course for thousands or tens of thousands of learners. I have been a student in three MOOC’s and a teacher/facilitator in three. Now, we are hearing from many learning colleagues about the applicability of the MOOC to workplace learning.

I would urge TRENDS readers to approach MOOC’s as important beta/lab experiments – where important and cool innovations are emerging in the construction, delivery and economics of educational “packages”. My experience as a MOOC learner has been exciting and mixed. While there were over 70,000 learners in one program – very few made it to the end of the program – and fewer were fully successful from a competency point of view. It was exciting to see how learners could be co-designers of the program and many resources were developed and disseminated from the learners. Finally, there were mixed models of how well the social/collaborative side of the MOOC’s worked.

As a teacher – I struggled with the format shifts reflected by MOOC’s. Were the assignments suggestions or could I predict a level of engagement of the learners. Was the content that was posted by learners legal – some added video that wasn’t within their IP ownership. And, the issue of fees were also interesting. A free MOOC will get high starts but perhaps high drop offs. When fees were added, did that take away the “open” label. It is also interesting to see colleges and universities that have never made a profit on classroom offerings think they will generate good margins by adding MOOC’s to their offerings.

It is early and really too early to predict how MOOC’s might evolve within the corporate world. I have been advocating that we take each of the letters as distinct areas for innovation:

And, is there a Competency check assumed in a MOOC – as well as certification or even college credit?

MOOC’s are important innovations. Now, we need to label them as Lab or Beta tests – and gather evidence as we experiment with the use of all or some of MOOC’s elements in corporate settings. We will be experimenting with the MOOC as a corporate model in an upcoming Learning LAB of our Learning CONSORTIUM. Interested in hearing from TRENDS readers exploring MOOC’s in our world.

The College of 2020If #HigherEd stays way it is, w/ 19th century style lectures, w/in 10 years Google U. and Walt Disney U. to take it over – Wim Westera

Addendum on 4/19/13:

Bridging the Skills Gap — from trainingmag.com by Lorri FreifeldEmployers want certain skills. Employees don’t have them. Why? And what can organizations and Training, employees, and the educational system do to eliminate the disconnect?

Excerpt:

With the U.S. unemployment rate hovering around 8 percent and millions of people desperately looking for jobs, why are many employers claiming they can’t fill their vacant positions?

The answer: A skills gap that threatens the sustainability of businesses around the world. And while a big part of the skills gap is a shortage of people skilled in the STEM (science, technology, education, and math) industries, there also is a gap in soft skills such as communication and advanced leadership skills.

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What is causing these skills gaps? What can—and should—employers and their Training departments, employees, and the education system be doing differently? This first article in a five-part series will address these questions. Subsequent articles will explore how corporate partnerships with colleges and universities can help bridge the divide (May/June), how to motivate employees to take advantage of skills gap training and eliminate any sense of promotion entitlement (July/August), how technology can help (September/October), and additional potential solutions and strategies for success (November/December).

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From DSC:We had better start talking STEAM not STEM from here on out (i.e. add the ARTS!). You can’t get creative thinkers without fostering some creativity.